Saturday, September 30, 2006

Tales from the Bag part 3

Ok, there's still more in the bag. Let's see what other goodies came out...The same year that Raiders of the Lost Ark was released to theaters, the first comic book based on everyone's favorite archaeologist also appeared in stores. Marvel Comics, released “Raiders of the lost arc, the movie adaptation”It was hugely successful and Marvel smelled the lovely green scent of dollars. So they decided to milk it a little and make a full blown series out of it. Of course, the story was already told and George Lucas really wasn’t going to script the comics for Marvel, so they decided to give the series a spin and invent Indy-stories of their own.

The series lasted until March of 1986. The 3 year run produced 34 comics and two more movie adaptations for both The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, the latter of which came out shortly after the series ended in 1989.

Most famous creator that worked on the book was Spider-man co-creator and original artist Steve Ditko.

I'm not sure why either, but Marvel had Ditko draw eight issues of INDIANA JONES in the mid-1980s.Unfortunately, all the Indy faces appear to be altered by John Romita. Why give Ditko the book if either the editor or Lucasfilms didn't feel he could draw Harrison Ford's face?As a matter of fact, this was common practice at the time at Marvel.Romita was now Creative Director or something which basically meant that he “fixed” errors and touched up other people’s work.

The good thing about the books is that the stories were a lot like the movies, same style, same great mixture of humor and action, and Indy is…well he’s the Indy we all know and love.The bad part is that the art isn’t always very good, a lot of different artists, a lot of different styles and not all were suited for a comic which had to show a retro-look…. The stories were set in the 40’s so they needed a faux-Golden Age look.

Finally here’s a list of a few creators that worked on the book….

John Byrne - Terry Austin David Michelinie - Ron Frenz Denny O’neil Archie Goodwin Herb Trimpe - Vincent Colletta - Joe Rosenpretty impressive list for such a low-key book. Legend has it that most creators loved to work on the book because they were such big fans of the Spielberg-Lucas creation…Indiana Jones